Hi, yeah it’s me – I haven’t be writing because honestly there has been nothing to write about. I literally haven’t been anywhere apart from work, home, my nieces. Though sometimes I do go to the supermarket, so I guess that’s something right?

I was meant to go home to NZ for a week in early Sept for my mum’s 90th birthday but thanks to that covid thing I haven’t been able to go anywhere. I was pretty gutted to be honest – it is really hard to not travel when I can’t, as opposed to not travelling when I don’t want to haha.

Last time I wrote, we were in the throws of working from home but now we have gone back to mostly pre-covid ways but with more video calls and more suspicious looks when you cough or sneeze.

The state of things in this state (Queensland) is that basically you can’t travel outside the state or country unless you have special permission. If I did want to go home to NZ, technically I could because I am a New Zealand citizen travelling on a NZ passport however I would have to quarantine for 2 weeks there (and pay for the privilege) and then when I come back to Australia, I would have to do the same – it is about $3000 AUD for each period of quarantine so yeah, as much as I want to see my mum it won’t be happening any time soon.

I know that in the grand scheme of things we are a lot better off here in Queensland than other parts of the country (and world) but it has definitely been a strange time for everyone. Even stranger when you see people travelling from country to country in Europe and you’re like “so you go from England to Greece for a Greek Island jaunt but I can’t travel home to see my 90 year old mum?”

Sometime life throws you lemons and other times it throws you giant whopping watermelons!

What else is going on? Well after 17 yrs of living where I have, I decided recently not to renew my lease and now have less than two months to go through everything I own and throw out the stuff I won’t be taking with me to the next place I live.

I have already started to cull, declutter, throw crap away or whatever you want to call it and in a way it has been rather cathartic. I have been to the dump a few times and actually throwing a bag or box of stuff over the rail to the depths of the rubbish pit has been a strangely satisfying experience.

Why now after all this time? Well it is a number of things that added up really:

– it started a few weeks ago when I realised I hadn’t received a lease renewal – which I normally get in July for my lease ending in November so I questioned it at the time and was told they were checking with the landlord.

– then I found out that the NBN wasn’t going to work for the property I rent at because the previous landlords were dodgy and the current ones either didn’t realise what they were doing or did care. The city council does not recognise the place I live in as two units but as one property so there is NBN to the property but not the two individual units – very strange and weird but also very confusing!

– not to mention that I had found out from my upstairs neighbour that he had signed his lease renewal in July

– oh and the ongoing that the bath/shower is a death trap and I have already slipped a couple of times (one where I slipped out of the bath, hurt my tail bone and was very close to hitting my head on the bathroom sink!!)

I put it all together and thought it was just time for me to move out.

Yes it is a HUGE change for me and yes it is a lot more work for me to get rid of my crap, move and then probably move again instead of staying in my comfort zone and dealing with issues at hand – sometimes the harder option is the best option.

I didn’t expect to share all that haha but there you go! This is what happens sometimes when my fingers start tying and I can’t stop.. very similar to when I speak – sometimes I give more information than I get ask for 🙂

And on that note, I should probably leave it there for now. Who knows when the next time we will meet – I have learned not to put any expectations on myself in regards to social media these days. Yesterday I posted on Instagram for the first time in 2 weeks and I have been meaning to do a weekly excerpt of my Grace Aunts travel diary from 1938/1939 on Facebook but I keep forgetting.

In all honesty, I have other things on my mind right now and I haven’t really given much thought to what I should be posting and when.

I suppose that is a good thing?